Sound the Bugle
by Twain Sight
Summary: SONGFIC While in trapped in Skandia, Evanlyn reflects how her friend has changed and wonders if he will ever be the same. Not a romance


**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters or setting here. They all belong to John Flanagan. The song belongs to Bryan Adams, Hans Zimmer and Dreamworks Studio. I will return everything...eventually.

**Sound the Bugle**

Evanlyn sat up in her blankets, blinking in the predawn darkness. On the bed at the far side of the tiny cabin, the lump that was Will jerked convulsively beneath the blankets. Guttural, rasping moans resonated from him.

Evanlyn threw off her covers and ran across the room. Leaning across the bunk, she struggled to hold down the apprentice's flailing arms. "Will! Will, it's alright! Calm down; you're alright!"

One arm caught her in the face, dragging fingernails along her cheek. She pushed it down and pinned it with her own hand. Tears of fear and pain were rising in her eyes. "Will, snap out of it! Will? Stop it! You're scaring me."

_Sound the Bugle now,_

_Play it just for me._

_As the seasons change remember how I used to be._

Will's thrashing finally calmed and his ragged breathing eased. Evanlyn slumped to on the bed next to him, feeling salt water burn in the shallow scrapes across her face.

The shadow of her own face fell across the blanket and she looked up. The moon, pale and blurred by the window's rough oilpaper was shining down, illuminating her friend's pale face.

_Now I can't go on_

_I can't even start._

_I've got nothin' left,_

_Just an empty heart._

Evanlyn watched Will carefully, feeling the muscles around her heart constrict. The apprentice Ranger was sitting crouched in a corner across from her, his crossed arms resting on his knees and his face buried in the fabric of his sleeves. He was rocking gently, humming to himself in a muffled, toneless, endless dirge.

Those hands that she had seen work a bow with such efficiency at Morgarath's bridge were hugging his elbows tightly, blue veins and thin bones standing out beneath pale, lifeless skin.

She cursed Ragnak under her breath; him, the stuck-up hilfman who had sign Will's death warrant, and all of Hallasholm in general. They had taken what had once been powerful weapon—a machine of efficiency and power—and reduced to this: a senseless shell of humanity.

Evanlyn turned away abruptly, scrubbing at her eyes.

_I'm a soldier_

_Wounded so I must give up the fight_

_There's more nothin' more for me_

_Lead me away_

_Or leave me lyin' here_

"Look, Will. Do you remember this?"

The apprentice stared dumbly at the bow in her hands. Evanlyn smiled encouragement and thrust it, gently but forcefully into his grip. "Do you remember, Will? When _Halt_ taught you how to use this? Halt? And _Gilan_? Do you remember Gilan, Will?"

He was staring at her and for one brief moment she thought she saw a flash of… something. Recognition? But then it was gone. Will turned away, letting the bow clatter to the floor before walking calmly to the wall and sitting against it, fixing his gaze on a corner of the fireplace.

Evanlyn sighed and picked up the hunting bow, fighting back despair.

_Sound the bugle now_

_ Tell 'em I don't care._

_There's not a road I know that leads to anywhere._

_Without a light I fear that I will stumble in the dark;_

_Lay right done and decide not to go on._

Will was walking through the dark, swimming in a sea of emptiness. There was no time here; no duties; no cares. He didn't know how long he'd floated here, quiet, at peace with the void. Just . . .existing. It was warm here free of pain, of cold—of life. But it felt false, unreal.

He had felt reality creeping into his mind and he'd tried to thrust it out, to ignore it. But it came unrelenting. The whispers assailed his ears slowly first. Forming words; memories of voices.

"If you thought about it you wouldn't ask…"

"Jump off the cliff. It's less messy that way..."

"I'm Duncan's daughter…."

"Will! Stay alive! I'll find you wherever they take you…"

He ground his teeth as the words erupted into pictures. A ship crowned with wolf on the prow. Storm clouds lightning and thunder and rain. A pebble beach, wavelets lapping. A girl's face strands of tangled blond hair blowing across her face, watching him. He knew that face. But it was gone again. More of the ship. A rough town rising from the fogbank. Cold. Freezing, biting, numbing cold. Then. . .nothing. The blackness again. But a living, breathing dark. Not the nothingness of the void

Will lay still listening to himself breath. Where was he, anyway? Slowly, painfully he pried his eyes open.

"Will?"

_Then from on high somewhere in the distance_

_There's a voice that calls remember who you are._

_If you lose yourself your courage soon will follow_

_So be strong tonight_

_Remember who you are…._

A girl stood in the doorway. The girl; the one from the pebble beach. And he knew her name.

"Evanlyn!"

Will stood up and reached for the shocked girl, standing in the doorway. "Evanlyn! Thank God, you're safe!"

_Yeah! You're a soldier now_

_Fighting in a battle to be free once more_

_Yeah, that's worth fighting for._


End file.
